Today's Story Line

August 24, 2000

Most everyone remembers the day in 1990, when Nelson Mandela, beaming, walked out of a South Africa prison. And how that man went on to embody forgiveness and justice with his Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Now, the TRC's chief investigator talks about how South Africa is trying to export its brand of healing to neighboring Burundi.

Faye Bowers Deputy world editor

REPORTERS ON THE JOB..

*PRIVATE LINE? Fortunately Israel just announced plans to privatize its phone company, says the Monitor's Cameron Barr, who is getting settled in Jerusalem.

A couple of days ago, writer Peter Ford, a former Jerusalem correspondent, phoned Cameron. He was impressed to learn that Cameron's phone lines had already been installed. "Boy," Peter said, "It took months for us to get a phone line."

Cameron responded, "OK, but our voicemail is in Hebrew; the office and home lines are crossed, so you hear all conversations; and when one line rings busy, it doesn't bounce over to the next."

*WHERE TO HIDE? When two of Mexico's disgraced politicians disappeared, Panama surfaced as a possible hideout, as the Monitor's Howard LaFranchi notes in today's story. But no one seems to be considering Panama as a likely destination for a third politician gone missing.

Guadalupe Buenda, a grandmotherly local boss in the working-class town of Chimalhuacan, disappeared after a riot she reportedly incited last Friday. "Buenda, known as la loba or she-wolf, brought up her whole family on the booty of local Mexican politics," Howard says, "so the speculation is she has plenty of nearby dens to lay low in without having to flee Mexico."